April 25, 2022

Labyrinthine sentence of the day.

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when it’s clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them."

From "Political Correctness Is Losing" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine).

I feel challenged to rewrite that so that the word "support" doesn't appear twice. I especially hate the complexity of supporting opposition to defunding. If you oppose supporting defunding, you just support funding.

I think Chait's point is that many black people oppose defunding the police, and many Hispanic people want immigration law enforced, and that makes it inopportune for progressives to call these positions racist.

I was going to blog everything in that article, but it's an effort at expressing optimism, and it feels like a con. Don't worry about wokeness. It's on its last legs. Is it? Chait's main reason why it's played out is that it's hurting the Democratic Party's quest for power.

37 comments:

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

It “feels like a con” because it is. This hand wringing and thumb sucking type of article will appear in many forms between now and November only to be swept away immediately following the deluge. Chait will return to form quickly and remember none of this.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when it’s clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them."

TL;DR - People are noticing we're liars and that's not fair.

Ampersand said...

Jonathan Chait is a partisan Democrat who occasionally indulges in sanity, especially when an election draws near.

Ted said...

It's a surprisingly short essay that seems mostly designed as comment-bait. (There's nothing like challenging the assumptions of liberalism to get "NY Mag" readers to argue among themselves.)

rcocean said...

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict support for enforcing immigration law (or opposition to defunding the police) as inherently racist when it’s clear those communities (supposedly offended by those positions) support them."

Convoluted? Yep. I had put in () and delete a few words to understand it.

Amadeus 48 said...

"Chait's main reason why it's played out is that it's hurting the Democratic Party's quest for power."

As my friends on the Left might say, "Who? Whom?"

This is a great example of why ideas should be debated and not suppressed. IF the Dems thought that hispanics would oppose enforcement of the immigration laws, and IF the Dems thought the black people wanted a smaller police presence in their communities, it might have informed them to hear people debate those ideas before they were implemented. Maybe what people wanted was more order at the border and better police training.

Maybe the activists are working a con. How could anyone trust Luis Gutierrez? AOC? Al Sharpton? Maxine Waters? They have something they say is Shinola that they want to sell you, but it smells bad.

Let's lift a glass to free speech and free assembly.

iowan2 said...

I distinctly remember the experts snuffing about blogs being low brow. Just some dregs with uknown bona fides "publishing" the written word. without editor(s)

So what's Chait's excuse?

I can guess the problem is the incongruity of liberals stated mantra, helping those that can't help themselves because of evil rich, evil white, evil rich white homophobic bigots.
vs what the liberals actual do. Manipulate identity groups in their never ending march to more power, for the sake of power.
This incongruity, causes otherwise smart people to get crossed up in their writing, trying to rationalize the ongoing lies.

guitar joe said...

It's a convoluted sentence but I know what he's getting at. I hope more libs step forward to call out their extremes, just as I hope more conservatives call out theirs.

Jaq said...

One thing that is obvious to anybody who has ever been poor is that the white left is pushing solutions to poor people's 'problems' that have, actually, nothing to do with their problems in real life because the leadership of the white left has obviously never been poor, and have no relationships with poor people that are not totally patronizing and infantilizing. We are all of us the "white left's burden."

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The White left's de-funding of the Police got many black people killed.

I'd call that racist.

Narr said...

Jonny Cheat again?

I'm calling out my extremes, for sure.

Istreme, ustreme, let's all streme EX-streme.

Temujin said...

Chait is assuming those young progressives who feel so strongly about removing police, borders, genders, and societal rules in general, will give a crap about what an aging Liberal like Chait thinks.

They don't give a crap about what any Democrats think. That is the danger they pose to the Party and I'm getting ready to watch the upcoming Jacobean purge.

Jaq said...

The worst thing about being poor today is that you can't afford to live in a safe neighborhood. My neighborhood had lots of petty crime, but it was basically safe, but that was the sixties, it's not a safe neighborhood today, but it is very affordable.

J Melcher said...

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict, say, ADVOCACY FOR enforcing immigration law or PROTESTS ABOUT defunding the police as inherently racist when it’s clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them."

This would draw a distinction between community organizers and lobbyists and grifters and "influencers" who loudly make a show over a position, versus the actual preferences and work done by those affected.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The evidence for increased black murders and deaths is real. Left to ignore the stats. Doesn't
fit the narrative.

guitar joe said...

"They don't give a crap about what any Democrats think. That is the danger they pose to the Party and I'm getting ready to watch the upcoming Jacobean purge."

The purge is happening on both sides. In PA, the senate election, especially on GOP side, is all about culture war issues. I can't remember the last time I heard a politician talk about lower taxes, job creation, or foreign policy. Will this craven appeal to Trump's base work? I guess we'll find out in November. For now, Dr Oz and David McCormick are punching it out to see who can more legitimately claim to be more Trumpian.

Mutaman said...

"I feel challenged to rewrite that so that the word "support" doesn't appear twice. I especially hate the complexity of supporting opposition to defunding. If you oppose supporting defunding, you just support funding."

A candidate for the Althouse gibberish Hall of Fame.

Rabel said...

Old ews.

Notice date and ... author.

Has the n-word forbiddence been extended to the n-letter?

mikee said...

Why is there an inability for the news media to discern the difference between activist advocacy for a certain policy, versus citizen support for it? I am left assuming the news media wants to support or condemn policies, rather than factually report support for them.

Jaq said...

I was just in downtown Burlington picking up some takeout, and there was a guy walking up the street trying the door on every parked car, in the middle of the day. Drug addicts passed out on Church Street, this is not the pandemic, it's post "defund the police" policing. Burlington VT no longer feels like a safe place where you could drop off your kids to meet their friends, like I used to do five or ten years ago. Welcome to Joe Biden's America.

CWJ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kevin said...

Chait's main reason why it's played out is that it's hurting the Democratic Party's quest for power.

A party with real principles wouldn't care.

farmgirl said...

I got stuck on depict.
If it’s true- you don’t need to draw a picture for people to see exactly how.
I think I see depict and think: deceit.

farmgirl said...

Think- think- think…
I’m Pooh.

n.n said...

Hutu vs Tutsi?

Mandela's Xhosa vs Zulu in South Africa?

Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), Inequity, and Exclusion is politically incongruent.

[Catastrophic] [Anthropogenic] Immigration Reform, in lieu of emigration reform... and civil rights, similarly lacks democratic support.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Chait's main reason why it's played out is that it's hurting the Democratic Party's quest for power."

Sure. Hurting their quest because it's on it's last legs. I don't think Chait is being disingenuous here. The Donks may have successfully used COVID to take down Trump but, in doing so, they also exhausted most people's tolerance for bullshit. Karen is apologetically defensive these days.

farmgirl said...

I’d heard Burlington was getting slummy. A lot of transient people about. Church street was always special. It’s a sad thing to witness.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It is a longstanding political strategy, but especially a liberal one, to talk as if something is already true in order to make it happen. It's not crazy, because sometimes it has a more than marginal effect.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ tim in vermont - I get it. I am in NH and get up there from time to time. Professionally, that was mostly at the Howard Center. (Because of DHMC we get a fair number of VT people at the state hospital here.) We have once-decent places here ourselves. Not much racist about it - in northern NE it's all white people causing the problems.* It's policy, meth, and enforcement. These are the places in America which have had the lowest rates of violent crime for three centuries. Now unsafe.

The sad thing, as you know, is that your neighbors won't get it. As with the people in the UCV and Concord in NH, they will be determined to find some way to blame anything other than themselves for the destruction of the environments of the poor.

* Okay, in Rockingham and Hillsborough Counties there is a lot of NE Mass crime bleeding over, and that is more mixed.

Mutaman said...

tim in vermont said...

"I was just in downtown Burlington picking up some takeout, and there was a guy walking up the street trying the door on every parked car, in the middle of the day. Drug addicts passed out on Church Street, this is not the pandemic, it's post "defund the police" policing. Burlington VT no longer feels like a safe place where you could drop off your kids to meet their friends, like I used to do five or ten years ago. Welcome to Joe Biden's America."

I was a Biden supporter until i heard what was going on in Burlington Vermont. Now i yearn for those halcyon days of his predecessor when everyone just stayed locked down in their homes.

Mutaman said...

I've got even worse news for you Tim- one of the employees spit in your Double Down Dogs. Joe Biden's America.

wendybar said...

Mutaman...you can blame CHI-NA for the virus that locked you in your house. How well did Joe do WITH a VACCINE?? He killed more than his predecessor...so SIT DOWN.

Christopher B said...

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when it’s clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions are not."

J Melcher nailed it. Chait is being obtuse because he wants to avoid highlighting that this is more a difference of opinion between largely white UMC progressives and the working- and lower-class minorities and less an internal debate in those communities.

Aggie said...

In un-camouflaged language then, white Progressive support minority criminals and want to see fewer of them in jail, even though they're much more likely, statistically, to commit violent crimes - especially against the fellow citizens of their own races. Law-abiding minorities make up the vast majority of the victims, and in spite of the avuncular, demeaning assessment of their intelligence by white Progressives, are nonetheless smart enough to see that lax immigration enforcement, 'defund the police' agendas, and empty-the-jail programs are directly against their best interests. Come on, November.

GRW3 said...

The real disparate impact is not the minorities in jail but the amount of crime we allow in minority communities. Maybe the giant spike in minority murders and crime driven by BLM, Antifa and Soros prosecutors is providing some clarity.

Lurker21 said...

"It’s now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when it’s clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them."

I guess the solution is, instead of saying "Defund the police" and not actually defunding the police, Democrats will say "Fund the police" and go on defunding the police. Lying has become such second nature to the party, that they will find ways to appear to be tough on the border and on and crime while continuing to be soft, weak, and destructive. Maybe it all started when the government worked out ways to hide inflation by not including things like food and fuel in the statistics.

Mutaman said...

wendybar said...

" Mutaman...you can blame CHI-NA for the virus that locked you in your house. How well did Joe do WITH a VACCINE?? He killed more than his predecessor...so SIT DOWN."

Where do u think one who capitalizes WITH(sic) was educated?